TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The Taiwan Embassy to the Holy See held a Mid-Autumn Festival event on Tuesday (Sept. 17) in Rome, Italy, inviting Holy See officials, clergy, and foreign priests and nuns who previously served in Taiwan to have pomelo and mooncakes.

For Father Emmanuelle Silanos, the event was an opportunity to reminisce about his six years in Taiwan. He addressed many of the embassy staff in fluent Mandarin and spoke of his nostalgia for Taiwan and a deep desire to encourage all of his Taiwanese friends, per CNA.

Other guests included Holy See officials such as Archbishop Angelo Vincenzo Zani of the Vatican Apostolic Archive; Romina Elisabeth Taboada Tonina, Paraguay ambassador to the Holy See; and Ursula Jukori, ambassador of the Sovereign Order of Malta to Bulgaria.

Bishop Huang Min-cheng (黃敏正) of the Diocese of Tainan was also in attendance. He happened to be at the Vatican for a training course for new bishops. Both Huang and Zani led prayers both before and after the event.

Taiwan Ambassador to the Holy See Matthew Lee (李世明) also spoke at the event, noting Pope Francis’ call for worldwide novenas (nine successive days of prayer) for world peace on November 22, 2023. Over the past year, Lee said the Taiwan Embassy participated in three separate novenas for peace in the world, including the Holy Land and the Taiwan Strait.

Lee said the first novena involved prayers at nine churches in Rome from Jan. 25 to Feb. 2. The second novena involved nine churches in Italian cities from April 20-28. And the third novena involved visiting nine European Catholic churches from July 6-14.

Lee said that the embassy is planning two important upcoming events. The first is the 113th Taiwan National Day event to be held on Oct. 2, and the second is a response to Pope Francis’ request to regulate artificial intelligence (AI), in the art exhibition, "Interconnected Hearts: Taiwanese Contemporary AI Art," to be held in November.